Edugeek Award for Competent Program Design?

[ajbritton]

It's just a thought but maybe EduGeek could work together with Becta on this. A joint Becta/EduGeek mark/award might look more impressive to prospective purchasers.

@contink: I do think there needs to be the repository for install info, but unless someone chips away at the problem it will only grow.

[sahmeepee]

I think having a BECTA endorsement might detract from the clueful image. Something like Edugeek "Easy Install" award/badge might do the trick, but the problem with badges is that you can't tell if the software just hasn't been evaluated yet.

I'd be happy just to have a knowledgebase as long as it included the known-bad software as well as the known-good.

[CyberNerd]

I think Becta wouldn't touch this with a barge pole.
Fair enough having a wiki about how to install things the easy way - but it gets very difficult when people have different systems.
For me installing a SCORM package is the easiest thing I can do, but some don't have SCORM compliant VLE's. For some people an MSI install is easy - but not if you don't have an active directory backend. For some people 'apt-get install package' is easiest in a script, or shoving some files onto a web/file server might be really difficult for others.
Becta already endorse SCORM files as a way of deploying applications, I can't see them wanting to say any more than that.

[alan-d]

Going back to grading software titles.

A general grading given by Senior/trusted members e.g 1 to 5 stars

Then

A readers rating which includes a short write up of the product, good and bad points.

A bit like the system used by 'Whatcar.com' for cars.

Simple and effective but without bias toward any one product.

[SYNACK]

I think Becta wouldn't touch this with a barge pole.
Fair enough having a wiki about how to install things the easy way - but it gets very difficult when people have different systems.
For me installing a SCORM package is the easiest thing I can do, but some don't have SCORM compliant VLE's. For some people an MSI install is easy - but not if you don't have an active directory backend. For some people 'apt-get install package' is easiest in a script, or shoving some files onto a web/file server might be really difficult for others.
Becta already endorse SCORM files as a way of deploying applications, I can't see them wanting to say any more than that.

Agreed that there are may different types of systems around but they could be assessed against what they are supposed to work with. For example if it is windows software it should run with MSI and not write rubbish everywhere. If it is designed to run in linux it should be packaged or a simple case of unzipping it rather than spending half a day tracking down, installing and troubleshooting all of the dependencies.

Designed for Windows XP/Vista Windows criteria
Designed for Linux base Linux criteria

Even if you don't have an AD backend the fact that the MSI has been designed to be automated and installed silently via GP means that the install can be triggered silently and successfully via a login or autoit script provided by a linux server.

[SYNACK]

Going back to grading software titles.

A general grading given by Senior/trusted members e.g 1 to 5 stars

Then

A readers rating which includes a short write up of the product, good and bad points.

A bit like the system used by 'Whatcar.com' for cars.

Simple and effective but without bias toward any one product.

Add a slightly different front end on top of the data and it could also make quite a nice online catalog of approved software for the teachers/heads to look through. A nice safe purchasing environment where they can't get into to much trouble.

[CyberNerd]

Agreed that there are may different types of systems around but they could be assessed against what they are supposed to work with. For example if it is windows software it should run with MSI and not write rubbish everywhere. If it is designed to run in linux it should be packaged or a simple case of unzipping it rather than spending half a day tracking down, installing and troubleshooting all of the dependencies.

Designed for Windows XP/Vista Windows criteria
Designed for Linux base Linux criteria

Even if you don't have an AD backend the fact that the MSI has been designed to be automated and installed silently via GP means that the install can be triggered silently and successfully via a login or autoit script provided by a linux server.

Problem is that when you go down that path it's difficult to know where to stop - A citrix install is easy for some things and extremely difficult for others, macs, bsd's, mobile phones are other examples. Again, using the MSI example, surely copying to a remote fileserver and placing links is easier than an MSI deployment - so why weight an msi install over a manual filecopy.

[alan-d]

Add a slightly different front end on top of the data and it could also make quite a nice online catalog of approved software for the teachers/heads to look through. A nice safe purchasing environment where they can't get into to much trouble.

Linked to an affiliate scheme maybe